Mysterious Death Of Park Chang Soo

On April 29, 1930, a woman in Yeongcheon village of Japanese occupied-Korea set out from her home to the nearby hills to gather greens. She discovered more than that.

 

The Japanese authority was deployed to the scene. They discovered the corpse of a teenager who had been beaten so hard that his body was filled with scrapes and his face was unrecognizable. Next to him was a neat towel and an a-frame (it’s like an AC covering that you can hang on your back). The corpse was sent to a local hospital and a post-more disclosed the cause of death to be suffocation. The authority assumed that the towel had been used to strangle him.

 

At the time, the region was the epitome of the simple countryside. Killings did not happen in Yeongcheon. Even robberies were rare. But now, the police were tasked with recognizing the victim and the perpetrator.

 

For two days, the authority asked around the village if anyone had disappeared within the past week. There was only one. A teenager named Park Chang-soo.

 

Park Chang-soo struggled as a laborer for a local inn. He had been missing since April 26th and on the morning of April 26th, the innkeeper Ko Ok-dan and another worker, Cho Ki-jun was seen beating Park with a lever. Park had not been seen since.

 

Ko and Cho were shortly arrested. Ko denied the charges totally but after two days of inquiry (very likely utilizing human rights violations in the recent view), Cho confessed to the murder.

 

The following is a summary of Cho’s confession.

 

The innkeeper Ko was the second wife of a rich man called Han Baek-won who resided a village over. As Han’s first spouse was jealous and did not like Ko under the same roof, Ko was given a fee to set up an inn in Yeongcheon.

 

Ko was in her early twenties at the time and apparently, she was famous with men. When a man named Lee Ki-mun invited her to run away with him, instead of refusing him, she asked him for time to think. For whatever motivation, Park said Han and Han criticized Ko.

 

Angry, Ko planned to murder Park. With Cho, they took Park to the mounts at night, beat him, and suffocated him with the towel.

 

Ko finally admitted to the murder as well but recanted during the hearing. The judge sentenced the repentant Cho to 10 years and Ko to 15 years in prison.

 

In the meantime, the authority had located Park’s mum.

 

When asked if the corpse was Park Chang-soo, Park’s mother verified his identity. She indicated that the clothes were different but that it was her son. Their job done, the authority handed the corpse over to Park’s mother.

 

And the case should have finished there.

 

The Twist

 

On October 18, 1930, Park appeared on his mother’s doorstep and upon seeing him, his mother accused Park of being a spirit.

 

It turned out that while Ko and Cho had taken him to the mount to kill him, he didn’t die. He fainted. When he woke up, he was understandably cautious to return to the inn and rather, traveled to another village where he worked as a worker for a household.

 

So if Park was alive, who was in the grave bearing his name?

 

Understandably, everyone was stunned. Two people had been sentenced for killing and yet, their victim was alive.

 

The Aftermath

 

Soon, the blame game started. The prosecutors pointed their fingers at the authority. The police accused the victim’s family of being unable to identify Park.

 

So why didn’t Park’s mum identify him?

 

By the time Park’s guessed body had come in his mother’s village, he had been dead for a week. His profile was unrecognizable. And as the telling went in those days, “the Japanese authority will take you if you cause mischief.” Even if she had realized it wasn’t her son, Park’s mother was doubtful to have gone against the word of the authority.

 

Also, if the police had paid reasonable attention to her statement on his clothes, they might have kept it as proof. However, they gave the clothes and the corpse over to the ‘victim's family and with that, the two pieces of evidence of the teenager’s personality were lost.

 

As for Ko and Cho, they were innocent of the killing of Park. But, because the case was still open, the Japanese prosecutor, Matsumoto, expressed hesitation for a retrial.

 

The supervising judge at the time, Hasebe, admitted the wrong judgment but noted that his hands were tied unless the prosecutors invited for a retrial.

 

Finally, both Ko and Cho were given a retrial. Both confirmed that they made false confessions under the vicious police investigation and both were discharged.

 

Ko and Cho would later go on to petition reparations. However, as no such laws existed at the time for the Japanese Imperial Penal Code, their petition was struck down.

 

Park celebrated modest fame afterward.

 

The body found in Yeongcheon has never been identified.